ISLAMABAD, June 18, 2019: The Provincial Assembly of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) on Tuesday witnessed the presentation of Annual Budget for the Financial Year 2019-2020 and the Supplementary Budget for the Financial Year 2018-2019, observes Free and Fair Election Network (FAFEN) in its Daily Factsheet.

The Speaker announced curtailment of his and the Deputy Speaker’s salary by 12 percent.

Following are key observations of the proceedings during first sitting of the seventh session:

Members’ Participation

• The Assembly met for an hour and 11 minutes.
• The sitting started at 1522 hours against the scheduled time of 1500 hours.
• The Speaker presided over the entire sitting while the Deputy Speaker was also present.
• The Leaders of the House and the Opposition attended the sitting.
• Eighty-nine legislators (72%) were present at the outset and 62 (50%) at the adjournment of the sitting.
• The parliamentary leaders of PML-N, PPPP, ANP and MMAP attended the proceedings.
• All the three minority lawmakers attended the sitting.

Output

• Moved by the Minister for Finance, the House witnessed the introduction of the KP Finance Bill, 2019.
• Finance Minister presented the Annual Budget for the Financial Year 2019-2020 and the Supplementary Budget for the Financial Year 2018-2019 in the House.

Representation and Responsiveness.

• The lawmakers moved a motion to continue the budget session even on Saturdays and Sundays, which was approved by the Chair.

Order and Institutionalization

• The entire opposition staged a protest when the Chair did not allow them to speak on Points of Order during the presentation of the budget. The opposition members raised slogans and boycotted the rest of the proceedings.
• The House was later adjourned to meet again on June 21 (Friday) at 1330 hours.

Transparency

• ‘Orders of the Day’ is available for the legislators, observers and the media.
• Attendance of the lawmakers is not available for the observers and the media.

This daily factsheet is based on direct observation of the KP Assembly proceedings conducted by the United Rural Development Organization (URDO) – a member organization of FAFEN. Errors and omissions are excepted